A British climate scientist has succeeded in forcing an apology from the Sunday Times after it published an article alleging claims that global warming would damage the Amazon were “bogus”.
Simon Lewis, of the University of Leeds, says he felt he had to complain after the paper failed to accurately report his views and the paper’s article went viral on the internet and was even cited in a Wall Street Journal editorial.
“I filed a complaint to protect my reputation as a scientist – I had published papers showing the Amazon’s vulnerability – and because people were being misled about climate change risks to the Amazon,” says Lewis (press release).
“… What I find shocking about this whole episode is that an article read out and agreed with me was then switched at the last minute to one that fitted with the Times’ editorial line that the IPCC report contained a number of serious mistakes, when the scientific facts showed that it didn’t.”
Lewis became embroiled with the Sunday Times as a number of papers published articles attacking perceived mistakes in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s influential reports. Although some of these mistakes have turned out to be real, Lewis says that the article he complained about “was baseless”.
The Sunday Times article ‘UN Climate Panel Shamed by Bogus Rainforest Claim’, which is no longer on the paper’s website but is widely available on the internet, said that the IPCC claim that 40% of the Amazon could be wiped out by global warming was “based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise”.
In a detailed letter to the UK’s Press Complaints Commission, Lewis says that the IPCC report “contained an incorrect reference relating to a sentence about the potential impacts of climate change on the Amazon rainforest, and not an error of science”.
Yesterday, in an unusually prominent correction, the Sunday Times acknowledged that “In fact, the IPCC’s Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence.”
The Sunday Times correction further says, “A version of our article that had been checked with Dr Lewis underwent significant late editing and so did not give a fair or accurate account of his views on these points. We apologise for this.”
Lewis told Nature that, perhaps unsurprisingly, the affair had made him more cautious when dealing with the press.
“I am more wary,” he said, “but scientists do need to engage with the media and explain their work, particularly if it has policy relevance and significance.”
Nature has also approached the Sunday Times for comment and will update with any response.